Abdulwahid Bidin

Filipino Hero (Bayaning Pilipino): Abdulwahid A. Bidin (April 7, 1925 — February 2, 1999) — was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. Appointed by President Corazon Aquino in 1987, he was the first Muslim named to the Philippine High Bench.

Born in Tawi-Tawi, Bidin finished his high school education in Sulu. He fought with the resistance movement against the Japanese occupation during World War II. After the war, he pursued his college studies at the University of the Philippines as a government scholar, and eventually earned his law degree from the university's College of Law.

Bidin returned to Sulu and spent the next few years in private practice. From 1956 to 1959, he was an elected member of the Provincial Board of Sulu. Bidin first entered the judiciary in 1968, when he was appointed as a trial judge in Zamboanga City. He was cited by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines as the most outstanding trial court judge of 1979.

In 1983, Bidin was appointed to the Intermediate Appellate Court (since renamed as the Court of Appeals). He was an Associate Justice of the appellate court when he was elevated to the Supreme Court on January 12, 1987. Bidin served on the Supreme Court for eight years until he reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy in April 1995.

Bidin died four years after his retirement from the Court, on February 2, 1999.